e e e e e e e e e e
e e e e e e e e e wrong we need to tear it apart and figure out why went wrong and how do we
keep it from happening the next time now that doesn't mean we don't hold people accountable because that's an important part of what we do as an organization but at the end of the day we're not going to sit around pointing fingers and say who did what we're going to figure out how to not do it again how to correct what happened and then we'll
deal with the issue of how we got there we need to strip away the noise and the Clutter there's a lot of stuff out there that distracts us and if we're not careful we'll give that all of our attention and fail to f focus on what we need need to be doing to get our job
done so sometimes that's hard because there is a lot of noise and there's a lot of clutter out there that we have to deal with uh but if we'll understand that that is distracting and that keeps us from attaining our objectives we'll do a better job at stripping it
away avoid the Doom Loom this little guy gets up every morning he probably munches on a little bit of lettuce or something and he stretches out he goes hops in that wheel and he runs and runs and runs and runs and runs all day long and at the end of the day he hops off and goes gets in the cage and he has
accomplished nothing uh we need to be careful to avoid that Doom Loom um because tomorrow he's going to get up and get in that wheel again and he's going to run and run and run and he's not accomplished the thing tomorrow either so we need to make sure that every day we make progress and we accomplish things that help us attain
the vision that the council sets out for us you we're looking for show uh plow horses not show horses uh that show horses pretty and he prances around and rest assured there is a place for pretty in the city of D you know we are working
to improve our image by doing a number of things to make us look better so not downplaying the looks of those things around us but when we're talking about getting things done I'd rather have the the plow horse any day because he gets up every morning eat smokes and he's
ready to go to work he puts the Yol on and off he goes and the interesting thing about this image is if you look at that plow horse it's not even a horse it's a mule and he don't care that he's a mule he just knows he got up this morning to go to work and and thinking
about this I thought this morning that maybe a better analogy in our setting is that you know we don't need showboats we need tugboats in the city of Destin we need folks to get out there and and and move the stuff around so we go back to uh Mr Ford and
his comment but it's worth reading again if I had asked people what they wanted they would have said Faster Horses we need to take advantage of momentum when that flywheel gets moving and things are going well let's let's take advantage of it you know let's roll with it let's keep things moving at the
fastest Pace we can um then we'll see things getting done we'll make accomplishments this is important to to me in the culture that we live that we all have a life and we need to work to make sure that our people have a good
work life balance if they're not happy at work we're not going to be happy at home and if we're not happy at home we're not going to be happy doing things we need to do at work we've got some dedicated and committed people and part of my job is to help develop that
culture where folks want to work at the city of Destin they want to come in every morning they want to go above and beyond and do the thing there's a concept uh out there called organizational citizenship behav behavior and it says I'm going to do something for Jeff
today that's not part of my job but it needs to be done so Jeff I'm going you know thank you sir you're welcome but that's the attitude we need to bring with us every day and then it makes Jeff job more pleasant and more willing to go do something for Steve when Steve needs
something done so that's the culture that we're working to develop in the city um and so we encourage our folks to take time to smell the roses enjoy your life what we can do to help you enjoy your life let us know because we're all in
this together there's some very smart people that have said some things over the years that I like to share um Ken kessie if you know anything about him he was he grew up in the 50s and the 60s and he kind of linked the mod group of the 50s to the hippies of the 60s but he
said you don't lead by pointing and telling people someplace to go you lead by going to that place place and making a case it's easy to go somewhere and said y'all come on but it's a whole lot more difficult to say y'all come with me because and we've built a case and we've
stated a case and we shared it and it makes folks want to come along the journey with us Jim Ron a good motivational speaker U educator entrepreneur said some things and I want to apply them to uh our organization here in the
city we're going to be strong but we're not going to be rude we're going to be kind but we're not going to be weak we're going to be bold but we're not going to bully we're going to be humble but we're not going to be timid we're going to be thoughtful but we're not going to be
lazy we're going to be proud but we're not going to be arrogant we're going to have humor but without Folly we're going to enjoy what we do and we might make fun of one another but we're going to do it in a way that we understand that we got work to do and part of doing that
work is making sure we enjoy being here um during our time of work Brian Tracy says it doesn't matter where you're coming from all that matters is where you're going we spend a lot of time worrying about where we were yesterday when we need to be concerned
about where we're going tomorrow and in a visioning session that's what we need to do let's look to tomorrow and next week and next month and next year and let's understand that there are incremental steps along the way to get to what that big uh picture vision looks
like couple of my favorites say Thomas Jefferson he said in matters of style swim of the current but all matters of principle stand like a rock and I suggest to you that those uh principal things are such as honesty ethics respect and transparency and I think
we'll find those in the mission statement for the city and division statement for the city but those are important I can tell you from a staff level we're not going to compromise those things uh there's um there's no reason to and if we're going to be the city that we
want to be we want to deliver those world class service services and spaces we've got to adhere to these um but some things when he says on matters of style swim the current sometimes we need to give style points and let it go if it doesn't really matter to us you know
there's no reason to fight but when there are principal matters we're going to stand like a rock and then good old AB Lincoln says be careful where you plant your feet but once you plan them plan them firmly and I suggest that he his quote goes right along with
Jefferson's and that the places we need to plan our feed are on honesty and integrity and principle and ethics and the things that matter um so that we can do the things that are important to the uh citizens that we serve my staff has heard me say this and
I I'm I'm proud to say to you guys in the organization that I I lead and I'm proud to do that and I thank Council for the opportunity to do it we have a concept that said there's no big me little you doesn't matter to me where you fall in the organization you're important to
what we do if you go back to the the clock we looked at a little bit ago everybody in this organization is part of that clock and they uh that includes the council that includes the city manager uh the senior leaders and every member of the organization is important
uh I have stressed to them that I'm available I'm approachable my doors open uh and I mean that with all sincerity uh because everybody needs to be respected or deserves to be respected everybody deserves to be appreciated again we need
to hold people accountable to do their jobs and we'll do that U but we can do that in a professional way three rules that and three commitments I make to the city council uh and that I've asked our staff to make is no drama no surprises and don't
embarrasses you know we don't have time for workplace drama there's plenty going on already so I'm not real interested in who said who what about who on Facebook last night or um any of those things you know we don't have time for drama we don't have time for surprises the last
thing a city council member wants is to read in the headline paper tomorrow that their city manager was arrested for whatever it may be uh when those things happen and I'll tell you you if you get a call at 10 o'clock in the morning it's because we don't want you to be surprised you know we want to stay ahead
of those things and make sure that we apprise our Council of things that are going on that are important to them before they read it or hear it somewhere else and sometimes it's hard to get ahead of social media these days but we'll do our best and lastly don't embarrass us you know let's don't go out
be doing silly things that reflect bad on us as individuals and bad on us as a city so all of this is part of the the good to great journey and and I'm proud to be a part of that and as we move
forward I'll ask you a simple question why strive to be great why is that important why should we work to be great Mr B just as much energy ex that's right so my simple answer is why not right along that you
we're coming to work every day we've got jobs to do so why not take a little more effort if that's what it takes and strive to be great um so thank you for your attention I hope that adds a little bit of what
we're trying to do here today from our perspective and again as we as we move forward uh and we'll hand off to council here in a minute just want you know to stress again that today's exercise is for you guys to lay out a vision for us
to work on implementing and letting us do it through our budget and let it through us through our work plans um you know we don't we don't really need to leave here today thinking we need to go plant three trees at uh Morgan Sports Center or you know we need to have a bigger understanding of where we're
trying to go as a city and what we want U the city to look like over time as we deal with those um Services uh service and spaces so that's uh what I've got for the lead off and I'm going to hand off
to miss Jamie from our HR department and she's got some good things to share with you [Applause] yeah for some reason that's the only time people want to hear me talk is if that's what I'm saying good morning everyone and for those of you who don't know me my name is Jamie and I have been
in the role of HR director for the last two years with the city of dtin and in the last two years we've had a considerable amount of change but also remarkable growth and as we navigate through the change and consider and continue to grow it's really important
that we take a step back to um sorry to evaluate our progress to make sure that we are moving in the right direction so this visioning session is the perfect opportunity to evaluate where we are right now and to reflect on that to also identify the
areas that are in need of improvement and determine what our next steps so how do we get that information and how do we know what to do thank you for asking so we we recently conducted our 2025 um employee survey and something that we
should keep in mind whenever we are reviewing this survey is that with employee surveys there's no such thing as good news or bad news it's just a clear um picture of what we need to maintain and where we need to put resources to grow so with that let's get
into our survey oh okay actually I want to talk about this for side so something of note on this slide is if you notice we had 80 people participate in the survey out of 110 employees that is incredible that 73% of our employees were invested
enough to take time to take the survey and what that tells me is that we will have that number of people who are invested in having conversations moving forward about things that we need to change excellent please thank you okay so we had about 40 questions on our
survey so we thought that it would be best to break this down into five areas that we can we can focus on so those areas of evaluation that were important to us are employee well-being and satisfaction leadership and Trust communication and employee voice
compensation and career growth workplace culture and fairness to make it even more digestable uh I thought a star rating system would be kind of easy to read so that way everyone can kind of understand where we're at the four stars are a high satisfaction and then we split the
neutral group so three stars are that neutral group that are trending more towards High satisfaction and then two stars is that area of the neutri group that they're kind of really leaning towards low satisfaction and we need to we need to put some energy and effort into that group as well the low
satisfaction is one star and to make sure it's blaringly obvious the big red X for the critical dissatisfaction spoiler alert we didn't have any X's I know you're all worried so our first our first category the employee well-being and satisfaction and I actually can't see that far so let me
get M so overall we had four stars which is is incredible however the area that we have room for the most Improvement is um employ employees feel that the city could do a better job promoting physical
and mental well-being what you should all know is this week and next week we've been doing small group sessions with employees so that way we can get their feedback on this when you're taking survey you know I just really want to know what what people are thinking and why they feel that the city is in promoting their mental well-being
because if you notice um employees do feel like they have a strong work life balance so it's really breaking down those pieces and at the end of the um survey results we'll kind of give you guys a peek into some things that we're working on to help with these things leadership and Trust overall um
we have three stars that is very helpful from our four star city manager we have um employees do do feel like they are respected by the new city manager and Department directors and they do feel like senior leaders create a positive work environment where we have some area to
grow is employees don't necessarily feel respected and appreciated by the mayor and Council that is something that we have to work together on um you know fostering that relationship between the governing body of a city and then the employees who sustain it that's
something that's always going to take work but there been saying we can't build a one way oneway Bridge either way so that's something that we'll be working with Council on communication and employee voice overall um employees are satisfied with that where we have room to grow is
seeking employee ideas and communication from leadership through the small group discussions that we've been having with employees what I'm finding out is it's not necessarily that the information is not provided it's that they're receiving it in a way that they can I don't want
to say digest it but if we have somebody who doesn't have access to email email is not the best way to communicate information so we need to be a little bit more specific in how we communicate with different demographics so um that is something that we will work on as well next okay compensation in career
growth we're doing very well uh it seems like everybody shows up to work every day they know what's expected of them they get prompt feedback from their supervisor which tell me tells me when you go to work and you're doing something that's not in line with the city's goals or what you should be doing supervisors are providing that feedback where we have room to grow is
employees feel like adequate pay and whether that's the monetary side or if that's just a path to get to a spot where you're making more money with career growth that is an area that we need to to do better but overall um that is two stars okay the last one the best for
last this is the slide that I am most proud of workplace culture and fairness we are four stars all around generally speaking people love working for the city of dtin they feel respected by their supervisors they feel respected by their co-workers and they just generally feel respected whenever they show up to
work every day this is something that is not easy to change so it's much easier to maintain a good culture than to flip uh a toxic work environment or bad culture overall into a good place to work so I'm very very happy and proud to announce that we are an good spot here
so everything else we can we can work towards but having this as our foundation is very important we also asked our employees to rank their benefits in order of importance and they ranked pay as number one and then retirement and health
insurance as they're two and three through conversation with them it's not that employees don't value Merit increases time offer recognition but what they really appreciate is stability they enjoy knowing that they're going to get a paycheck they can
pay their mortgage they can retire one day as I know we all want to and if something were to happen with their family they know they can go to the doctor and be taken care of so it's the stability those top three provide that is something that is very important to them and then this is a summary of our
overall satisfaction so as I said I'm I'm very proud that the workplace culture and fairness is the top that is again our our foundation to build everything else on and I'll share with you all in just a moment um some things that we're working on to work on the last two um but the senior
leader group is going to meet in the next few weeks after we're finish with the small group session to talk as a group to see how we can you know make the most impactful decisions for our employees and then also of course getting that feedback from
Council next thank you okay so key takeaways like I said workplace culture and fairness is is the best where we have to grow is again we have to build that two-way bridge between the employees and the governing body which is is Council um and that is something
that we will work work together with could you do the next slide okay so what we're doing so to help with the career growth starting in May we are doing a city of Destin Leadership Academy and we're going to take 25 employees from various roles in the city and they are
going to attend this Leadership Academy once a month a professor from Northwest Florida State College is going to come down teach a 2-hour leadership course and that's going to go for 6 months and we are going to do that until every employee in the city of Destin has been through that leadership training and that's really embodying our principle
that you don't have to be in a leadership role to be a leader something else that we're doing that is very important is we are doing a deep dive benefits analysis with our broker right now we are fully insured and every year we come to council and we say you know we want we want all of
these things for our employees but also we're also going to bring you a 5 to 15% premium increase and that is not something that is sustainable as we move forward so we are going to be setting up a workshop with our broker and members of council to discuss a one to fiveyear
option so we can move to a a partially self-funded platform and hopefully provide some short-term options to cut those costs excuse me something else that we working on is reshaping our time off policy we are going to be combining our sick and vacation accounts nothing is
going to change um in terms of liability for the city it will just be employees have time off and that's it the acral rate would stay the same but I think that's something that will help them feel like um the city cares about their their um mental and physical well-being if they have that time off to take when
they need it and with that I will open it up to some questions if anyone has any no okay we are having the small group sessions this week and next week and then we're going to meet with the senior leader Group after that so I would say probably sometime after those conversations are
had yeah probably I think that's reasonable yeah with some nonprofits and they have a little B they have a similar problem uh and actually the Boys and
Girls Club over in Walton County Sherin was at the table and uh what they've done is lay out here's how much we spend on your salary here's how much we spend on your healthc care because they're spending like
$25,000 a year on each of their employees and they have about 150 employees in Northwest Florida here's how much we spend on your retirement here's how much we spent and then you know then that number is really their
compensation so they you know some people just see what's in the paycheck and see oh my I made this much this month but they don't see that the city's paying $30,000 or $40,000 on top of that for retirement
and uh health benefits and other benefits so Vision so you might I don't know if we do that or not give them a total compensation but if we don't we probably should because yes that would you know
you think you're making 40,000 but you're really making 70,000 our employees do have access to their total compensation however that sometimes that's just a tough one it's it's tough to educate people and get them to view their um paychecks in terms of total
compensation so that's just something that we need to sit down with employees and and talk through yeah but I mean the the benefits manager should be able to help you do that because they know the cost yeah oh yeah absolutely any other
questions all right thank you thank you Jamie and I want to thank all that participated in the survey that was a very high percentage we got some real good information from it and we will be uh facilitating um putting the plan together to make that valuable so
the next uh item on our agenda is hearing from our partners and uh waste management is up first Mr Doug good morning and uh and thank you for having us here and me uh I appreciate the opportunity to talk to you
um not every city does this and uh I I think it's rather unique so again I commend you all for doing it I I was lucky to be a part of this for years with you guys uh Waste Management um I was told we need to talk about uh not a
recap of last year but maybe some future and how we're moving forward and some things we're doing so uh as you know last year we spoke about our um sustainability projects and uh specifically here in Fort Walton Beach oako County we built a $30 million
recycling facility and that facility is operational was operational as of August and that means that all of your recyclables that are being uh put together or taken here are going straight to that murf where we
process bail and ship out and sell directly from that location uh they are largely us-based uh facilities where we send them to and uh you know we're really proud of that we have a $1.4 billion sustainability fund F that we're
working through and uh to be able to do some of that here locally is is really important and and a big deal uh the city manager brought up world class and I wanted to First say that you know the city of dtin has the highest level of
service in uh solid waste that you really can get and so I think you're you're there as in a world class service to your residents we are are humbled and appreciate uh you choosing us to to be your provider for that service and uh you know we we think we do a good job
even though we know it's imperfect uh we we strive to to make that better so the idea is how can we be better with that and uh sustainability is is part of that puzzle and and and what can we what can we keep out of the ground how can we
lessen our landfill impacts and really reuse repurpose and recycle so I have some statistics here that I think are fairly interesting to uh you and you haven't heard these yet um we've been doing some audits of recycling of all of
our municipalities the county uh anything that's coming in we bring in stuff from uh Hattisburg Mississippi Jacksonville uh Jackson Mississippi that far away to our murf here in Fort walon Beach so um you know it's it's it's it's we're auditing that material so we can
come back and tell our customers hey you know you got a lot of contamination or this is what it looks like here are some ways that that we can can fix that because we want a clean uh recycling stream and I'll get into that a little further but to to start uh and I believe
I told you this before but Destin averages about 15% um uh diversion meaning of of the whole amount of stuff that's thrown away only about 15% of that is being recy is recycled material the rest is garbage um
that Stacks up locally with uh uh some others nville is around 21% on average ok county is maybe 16 or so percent so um that's a that's an opportunity to grow that a little bit more we think
that can be done with education and uh again we're going to I'll I'll mention that in a second but couple of key pieces that that I think are important and I apologize for having to read this because I got it last night um and I'm just going to be very specific so we
pick up solid waste recycling at you know at the curb our trucks track that information and when we audit we know what neighborhood it came from we know what street it came from we know what it looks like when it came out of the can so we wanted to we're diving into that
in every contract we have to help our municipalities understand where their contamination coming from uh the Indian Bayou area uh in November we we we checked that about 40% contamination 16% of that is bagged
material so that means probably good clean recycling that somebody put in a garbage bag and put in their can and that is not recyclable because it contaminates the stream because the machines and the people who manage that they don't break bags open and sift
through that it's single stream for a reason so all things go in loose it's an education component that we're working with our partners on but uh Indian value 40% 16% uh bagged Henderson Beach area to the Walton County Line with 64% of
contamination with 18% of that being being bagged material excuse me and then the West dtin area say north of 98 um had a contamination rate of 47% in December with uh 12% of that being
bagged material our goal is to get that to about 15% total contamination we feel like that's kind of a that's a not an industry standard that's our standard if you pull out the bagged material you you cut a chunk out of your uh contamination already that's low hanging rout right
tell people not to bag their recycling put it in the can the way it's supposed to go the way the lid says it's supposed to go and that will that that will be a benefit because again the cleaner the stream the the better it is the easier it is on our equipment and um you know so we've been meeting with uh our
partners we've met with uh Tamara and the mayor on some messaging we have a very robust uh campaign that can be used U some of our local Partners have started that and I think that we're going to start that here in Destin very soon with materials that can be shared
and again low hanging fruit would be uh don't bag it if if you collect aluminum cans throw them in the can in the cart loose don't bag them up and that that will solve that will begin solving the problem um you know recycling is is
something that residents pay for it's part of the the structure of the of the the contract that we have with you so everybody gets a can and uh you know as we begin to partner and really dive into What's Happening Here locally because we've never been able to do that before we think we'll be able to to really
bring that contamination rate down and that's truly our biggest Focus here locally especially in the Destin area because like I said before you are already at the top you you're doing everything I think that that a citizen could ask for uh especially in the solid
waste side because there's no no want left and uh that's really commendable and again we appreciate the partnership I can always talk about this in more detail I answer any questions you may have or get back to you if I don't have the answer I'm not the recycling guy he actually is out of town today so uh I
was going to bring him with me but um yes if if there's anything I can answer or anything specific you want to know I'd be glad to talk to you now or anytime got something it's okay Doug thank you for being here um has there been any thoughts or
discussions about uh some of the calls few that I get about things is if we could ever switch the yard day and the bulk day switch it the pickups for the future of uh not having because most
people out hear from will do their yard work over the weekend oh I see what you're saying yeah and then it sits there for Friday it's been brought up um and actually you're not the first person to ask about that in the last six months uh I will say this can it be done yes
but if we change Dustin's yard and bul day because everything has been set for so long somebody else is as well have to move got and it doesn't mean that we can't do it or we can't figure out a solution if that's truly something that you guys wanted just to to look at we
will sit down and we will break down everybody we're working with sure so so just so yeah I mean yeah if if that's if that's truly something we need to look we will we will dissect that and bring it back um on the on the recycling and waste and contamination you know I think
that's uh I think we've heard about that before and continued to and you know me personally and people that I've had the conversations with when when Waste Management gave us two large garbage cans they open the Pandora's box and
just throw more trash in there um is at least the perception that many people feel um going back to the old school little you know Square thing I mean you couldn't throw all your trash in there you had to
throw the cartons and the cans and the bottles and that was it which which I know that technology for you know we have the the truck and all that um and then now people build houses they put two garbage cans in their kitchen one for recycl recing and one for non-
recycling but inside that garbage can is usually a bag um and and these are all the things that you know I deal with and people we talk to deal with so the education obviously is is is key and um I don't know the creative way you
know you guys and Tamara and all those people are are going to have to be very creative because it is important and I think if uh but unfortunately convenience nowadays usually causes people just to forget about that so well you know you're right so we have to change the mindset right um You have two
large cans carts but you also get twice a week garbage so if you were filling up three carts a week for garbage unless you're some kind of crazy vacation rental most house I mean I'm a family of four with twice a week garbage and I only fill my can up halfway once a week
typically and then have recycling so because we have the same service I have so it's tough yeah it's a mindset change my only idea I would provide which might not be favorable to many if you stop picking up my recycling because there's
a bag in it MH and your guy leaves a legible note on that can to explain why specifically it was not picked up it will not take me many times to stop messing up and that's the
my kids I have to do things like that y you know understood and if because the worst thing to have is an overflowing garbage can whether it's recycling or not and sometimes I don't know why it's not picked up so and I think that would that it's it's abrupt but you stop
picking up the cans yep we have you know might fix that problem we do have that ability and that is part of the process so um do we have some uh co-branded material that we can create that's you know city of Destin and waste management want this to be this way and it and it
can be put on the can uh we things that we can provide to coding for M and we can do ourselves so yes again this deep dive into what is actually happening locally like hyper locally is new for us so yes that's you you may start seeing some stickers on some carts that say hey
we're not picking it up because you know every time we dump it it's got It's it's full of bags or it's open and we can see all this you know the wires hanging out of your recycling cart which which happens yes sir I guess my in my neighborhood the um
somebody happened to follow or or be down by the uh dump in Fort Walton and saw all the recycling going to the garbage and so now they think that it doesn't get anywhere and I don't know how but you're
going to have to overcome that I think most of this happened when um we were building in Fort Walton and and we hadn't gotten it there yet and Pensacola had shut down so yeah that's the only place it had to go but um I know I've
talked to several people in my neighborhood about the whole recycle thing and that's their attitude is well it's only going in the dump anyway so why should we bother well that so thanks for bringing that up and that's another perception thing we CH that we're challenged with and uh you know luckily
we're not located at a landfill like like our some other recyclables are but OKO County transfer station before our murf opened in August had the garbage on one side and right next to it with the jersey barrier is Recycling and it it's
very easy to see that uh or to to to assume that it's mixed and it shouldn't be I won't say that it never happened but it shouldn't be uh but that's some perception things we have to we have to overcome we have some uh educational pieces that have been pushed out locally
uh about our facility that talk about how it it's picked up and that yellow lid can is put in our truck and it goes directly to the recycling plant it's not going to the transfer station where it could accidentally get comingled with garbage or or anything like that again it's that's all part of a long-term
education plan and I appreciate you advocating and letting people know that it's not and we asked everybody to do that and we're working with your Pio on that as well thank you really we don't and that's not part of
the process but we have some resources where we can we can Trail we our our trucks are automated service you know there's reasons we don't get out of the truck it's not safe um you know the the cost is exponentially higher when you have to stop get out of the truck and there's a lot of things involved in that
um and it's not efficient either uh to tag a c a cart like you're talking about would take some uh additional efforts but yes we would do that we have we have ways of doing that it might not happen uh immediately we have door hangers as well I we can walk up and put a door hanger on say Hey you know we didn't we
didn't get it for this reason but uh to your point no we don't want to get out of the truck that truck to do it we would have to make some uh some other uh Arrangements you would think it's not that hard but but we we have a plan and like I said we're working with Pio and
and others to and other cities uh to to start that that messaging and we appreciate it when you tell people too I mean we everybody let them know I I was going to suggest that you do like you do on the commercial properties when something's wrong with a
dumpster you send a picture and you send it directly to the property owner and it goes via email and and we can do that too because we take a picture of that can and the cart and when when the garbage comes out of it yes that's that's part of the process
it's usually when it's very habitual that we get to that point but again that's that is exactly what we're doing Miss Lisa knows it has happen I know I get them all the time all right we appreciate it very
much I really appreciate and and again we appreciate your business and your partnership and uh we do invite you all out to our murf anytime you want to see it I know Jim came out for the opening I don't know if anybody else was there but uh Bobby Tamara um we if anytime you want to come see that thing we'd love to
walk you through it once you see it and understand what's happening there it's it's pretty eye openening so shoot me an email and uh BR a you can bring a friend absolutely just just give me a call or shoot me an email any of you anytime we'd love to to give you a tour
thank you Doug thank you waste management for what you do on for the citizens that we serve Mr Lockwood from dist and water users coming and while he's coming and just remind everyone that there's coffee and donuts and some goodies back here in the back room if you U need a break to help yourself
thank you thank you Mr thank you Larry um Larry talked about um moving from good to great and that there's some steps that need to be taken to to do that and what we'd like to do today is to share some of the things that we think are important get this the right
way get it big enough to read uh DW's Vision includes moving forward with adoption of the Land Development code and it's important to us because that allows us to know uh what can be built and helps us plan for future demand um we think that
development and acquisition of beach access to keep our visitors coming back uh to enjoy Paradise is important and uh we'd encourage you to try to find a balance uh in the regulation of vacation rentals that doesn't go so far as to drive people away from visiting as
tourism is a major economic driver in our community uh we also encourage you to keep moving forward with uh development of roads and pathway improvements and the studies that you've been conducting to help address traffic because that'll assist us in our
response but ultimately our vision is to continue a long-term working relationship with the city of dtin and the staff so that we can work together to serve our community and to develop uh a place that we can all enjoy to work
live and play thank you thank you Mr Lockwood and Monica thank youall for what you do for the citizens that we serve because you're a big part of it um next up is our beach safety folks um uh thank you for having me Joe Beach Safety Division chief for the
Destin Fire Control District um I just wanted to touch on where we're at as far as our service uh we're in a really really good spot last year the city um approved in their budget an increase in the budget what's going to help for us to to finally get to a point where I would consider we're at we're at
maintenance level um for 20 years we've been trying to build this thing and I feel like we're we're finally in a really really good spot and it should be a round of applause for everybody involved in that um we have contracts with the county contracts with the city contracts with
the state we have seven miles of contiguous beach with lifeguard uh coverage we do that in the harbor we do that in the pass we have a beach wheelchair program at all of our beach most of our beach entrances and trails a junior life program that's held in um Henderson Beach State Park and a
lifeguard Exchange program with Australia where we've actually sent some of our local kids over to Australia and then they've got to live the Endless Summer we brought some of those uh folks back um return um I was going to disagree with you for just a second there Larry you gave a great uh opening presentation there but thinking about
the past and where we're going and sometimes we need to look at the past to see where we're at and where we need to go um 20 years last year I last beginning of this month I apologize I celebrated my 20th year with the Des and Fire Control District um I thought about the things that we we discuss we talk
about salary PTO um whether or not we should have signs here signs there what color the flag should be and we kind of get lost sometimes in that stuff uh 20 years is just over 7,000 days I took a look at one number that stood out and We rescued
3,322 people in the last 20 years so for if you were to lay that out on a account that means every other day we've saved a life so all the other is kind of the weeds that's kind of to be the most important thing that we've all been been a part of we don't see those articles in the newspaper anymore six drown 10 drown what color was the flags we have fixed
that it doesn't mean that that stuff doesn't still happen from time to time we have a big beach population a large attendance but we've kind of nip that in the bud so we're in a really really good spot uh Beach safety is going to continue to do that and maintain that for years to come and if anybody has any questions I'd be more than happy to
answer them I think you need to put that stat in the paper I will or we will I really I really do because I I in the summertime you know you get the worst of it I'm sure but we do yeah no one's drowning today I
hope I hope so too they'll freeze but um no I I really think those just the statistics need to be in the paper and I think and I think they need to be everywhere that we can promote what we're doing positively versus always the
complaints that's right I agree I would agree could you just remind us again uh your count of beach attendance for this last summer uh 2 million 2 million that's not the exact number obviously but it was just at 2 million we did see a slight
decrease I don't think it was astronomical but there was a little bit less people here than um saying 2020 2021 we all know we had probably more people than we're than we're used to thank you everybody thank you Joe and congratulations on
your 20-year Milestone that's and and for those 3,000 some Souls that you saved the lives that's and that's what it's all about and I appreciate the fact that everything they do is for that end goal so thank you for that great job Joe they've done a great
job out there at the beach um for those of you that don't REM me good morning I'm Chief Mike Lis with Destin Fire Control District um newer in this role um so please forgive me if I haven't got it to meet everybody yet uh just a few things sharing with uh des and Fire Control District that you guys can take
into consideration as you're planning uh we are finalizing our dock which I'm sure some of you are aware of we have partnered with OKO County Sheriff's Office to have several of their boats on our dock for faster uh response we've also partnered with FWC um our new boat
will be coming in late March early April we will have the largest seab bur capability in the State of Florida which kind of coincides with egin Air Force Base and some of the materials that they fly in and out of here and we will be able to Monitor and
and maintain that relationship with them that was on a very large Grant we got a couple years ago so that boat we're excited about coming in it's going to have a 3,000 gallon a minute pump so if we get some more of these boat fires that I'm sure you guys have seen recently we will be even more equipped than we have been the last 20 years to
handle some stuff like that um we're increasing our staffing we are moving to a new schedule recruiting lots of firefighters um we're doing very well with that we just hired 12 we're looking to hire six more um before the start of the summer uh with that comes a lot of
training so we've been really ramping up our High Level Training thank you to you know the city of Destin Destin water users for really partnering with us and letting us do some of these higher level courses um throughout the city because you know that's important um and last uh
we're partnering with a task force coming out of Tallahassee this region is kind of isolated from the state it's one of our main concerns for major disasters collapses hurricanes everything that we've seen all across the state so with that has brought a lot of training a lot of experience and a lot more
capabilities for the Des Fire Control District to be able to handle high level disasters um here in our region not rely on our state partners and we're we can handle our own backyard so and I have to wait for those resources um if you guys guys have any questions please feel free we'd love to
partner with the city in anything we can do again we're some of your biggest fans so all right thank you thank you we appreciate all the the fire Institute does for our citizens Captain
fer morning so anyone that who doesn't know me I'm Jason fulam I'm the captain with the OK County Sheriff's Office and the sheriff's office would like the city of Dustin to consider two things for your visioning um for years to come the first is one that we spoke to about before is
the stallman office and Mr Dustin you may have to F fact check me here because some of this I got from folks who have been around as as long as you have in the city but the the stallman office was built prior to the city actually being the city um by fireman who scavenged the
cinder blocks to build it from where the old Seaglass Motel burned down so and and while it has served well for a number of years it is certainly not world class we are out of space um
you know most of the guys are having to share offices over there none of the the the first line supervisors don't have offices over there they're out at the commons so they're separated from their guys and and we're out of storage space there we've got um our server room is
also a storage room which is I'm not an IT guy but from what I understand that's certainly not ideal uh and then you know on a on a other side besides just storage you know people come to Dustin because it's a
beautiful place y'all live here because it's a beautiful place I love it because it's a beautiful place and the image that we put forth is important and the image of the stalman office right now is is not world class
it it it it's looking its age and you know a lot of people think that my job is to put bad guys in jail and the truth of the matter is a law enforcement officer's job and this is something that's very difficult to get across to younger Law Enforcement
Officers it's not to put people in jail it's to restore the Dignity of victims and part of restoring that dignity comes with the professional image being put forward and I want to see the image of the city of Dustin and okusa County
Sheriff's Office law enforcement be that of professionalism and one that can restore dignity so I would like to ask for this the city to consider partnering partnering with the tdd to try to build uh an office there that not only houses
us houses em s but also can house code enforcement and a lot of people will ask why I want code enforcement there it's because the code enforcement is probably the department in the city that we partner with the closest and I used to always tell people
when I started in law enforcement that I wanted my partners not just to be my partners but I wanted them to be my friends as well because when I'm getting my butt kicked on the side of the road I don't want my zone partner coming to help me because I'm a fellow law en
forcement officer I want my zone partner coming to help me because I'm his friend that makes a difference and it makes a difference when we're working closely in the same office with the people that we have to partnership with so again I would just like y'all to
consider partnering with the tdd uh anything that we can do to facilitate that we will certainly certainly do to try to make that an office that we all can be proud of the other thing that I would like to see is us add a beach dep
to the city of Dustin contract I spoke to several of y'all about that last year as uh something upcoming uh you heard Chief Joe say that we had approximately two million visitors to the to the beach last year which was actually down
slightly from previous years and our beach deputies are the spear that keep Destin in OKO Island beaches family oriented and keep it from turning into what pan m city beach has
become reg regrettably over the years uh you know right now we only have three deputies in our Beach Unit and we have to run two shifts in order to get um 7-Day a week coverage which means that half the time out there
one Deputy is having to cover both beaches in okalo island and dtin and y'all can imagine with the East Pass being in the middle of that you know having to drive your ATV back up to your truck get in your truck drive over to the island getting the truck over there
and and drive out to um you know drive to the ATV out on the Des or the Okaloosa Island beach and back makes a difference and uh and Joe can tell you when my beach Deputy that's on that shift it's only one Deputy when he's over on okoa island Joe's folks are
calling saying Hey Hey where's our Deputy where's our deputy and vice versa when um when they're over here when he's over here Chief huffnagle is calling me saying hey hey where's our beach Deputy the reason for that is a lot of people would think that that's a job that you
could kick back and kind of enjoy the scenery it's not our beach deputies are some of the busiest deputies in our agency uh over the past five years they've averaged 604 arrests a year they average
59 um distress swimmer calls a year uh some people may not realize but Joe certifies our beach deputies as Open Water lifeguards as well so we're able to assist his folks in pulling people from the water and and last year alone
we answered 7,142 calls for service just those three guys so yeah it's it's a needed position and I would certainly like to see the U the city consider uh adding that to the city contract I'm here for any questions
if anyone has any yes sir do yall y'all still have the office over the commons right yes sir we do do y'all pay a lease amount for that yes sir I would I'll have to get back with you about what the lease amount is
but I want to say it's a dollar a year yeah cuz I I think as you're aware based on some of our other conversations that were we're having you know if we put a facility here as opposed to stalman and the
Commons you put it here you put you in code this is kind of centrally located the sheriff whatever he's paying for that lease payment could help us we could get the tdd I don't mind kicking in a little bit but I think that might
be a better solution I mean I I we would love that this just came on the radar so I have to think about we we would absolutely love for that office to be combined with the city facility uh for many reasons one because it centralized and it'll give us a better response time
from the actual office and easier for the guys to come to but two because of what I was talking about before because not only are we partners with cod we're partners with y'all we're partners with the city and we value that partnership I value that partnership tremendously most of your city staff are good friends of mine um from the years that I've been
working out here and I would I would truly love to see it one facility where we can all work together closely who owns that building at the airport that used to be the EMT office EMS I believe EMS still owns that okay yes ma'am Captain Fon thank you for being
here appreciate it um similar to Mr Bagby uh similar thoughts obviously um I think I think for me my vision working with the sheriff's department over the years you know I continue to try to fight for the citizens of Destin and the money that we
pay you guys to also try to fight for making sure that the fair share is being burdened by the county specifically as well um you know because I think there's still room for improvement for that for the citizens of
Destin but uh I I think besides the tdd I'm hoping that the vision of the sheriff will also be to work with us and the board of County Commissioners in the county specifically to to help that Vision right I mean I agree with you it
would be good to have more space um you know I see the ambulance parked at that office on stalman too is that a County uh the ambulance the EMS has got two offices inside the office there and it's it's an agreement with the that the yeah
their County they have an agreement with the sheriff's department not with the Sheriff's Office it's the city building gotta so there's a lot there for sure but like Mr BBY said I mean the the idea of the future here is being discussed um there's also property BYU that we've
been in discussions with as well and you know I think it would be good to know if the sheriff outside of the tdd is truly wanting to partner with us on things like that because there's opportunities in the near future that I think we could look at um absolutely
we're we're willing to we're willing to sit down and talk about anything obviously as as many everybody knows the Sheriff's Office can't own property sure uh so any building that we're in has to belong to someone else that we but you're in a shopping mall right now and
you're in our old old old building so besides just putting the burden on us to try to figure out where to put you guys that we already pay you over a million dollars a year to be here for let's let's let's let's partner together and figure out with the county with the tdd and with the city and
figure out where to put y'all more than willing to cooperate and sit down and work on it but and as you know that the money that y'all pay to the Sheriff's Office doesn't doesn't create a profit for us I assure you it all goes to operating expense thank you yes
sir thank you all very much thank you Captain thank you for all you do for us the city I can tell you that in my short time here anytime we've needed anything from Sheriff's Office Captain has stepped up and delivered so we appreciate that partnership Mr ch
thanks Larry and thanks everybody for the opportunity to be here um I enjoyed your presentation I'm stealing a couple of those things to put into my leadership and sales and customer service slides and presentations that I do so um I thought some of them were good and Doug touched on this a little
bit the the phrase world class that's in our vision statement building a world-class Community one business at a time um and I think it's it's neat that everybody's using the same phrases and and the same messaging I'm also think it's it's it's cool to sit here because all these people sitting over here where
I'm sitting are your partners but they're also our partners and and it's it's this community really is intertwined every these people over here speak to groups of hours at the chamber four or five times a year just like most of you sitting around this table as well and I talked about Dustin forward at the
council the other night at the council meeting the other night and I look around the room and there's probably 10 or 11 people who went through the Dustin forward program um and you all have spoken to the Dustin forward program and again and I think that's a great chamber City relationship and and one that makes
our community better um give you a little little more Global picture than than others have talked about in here and there's a reason for I'll do that I'll narrow it down to the city but Florida has the 16th largest economy in the world so if we were um our own
country be 16th in the world in uh GDP size we're about to pass Saudi Arabia um and that's that's something a lot of people don't know um so H when we look at this as the chamber it's how do we get our piece of that economy what can
we do to make this bring that that bring that here um something else that's going to excite you is by the year 2030 there going to be 2 million more drivers on the road in the State of Florida now sometimes we feel like there's 2 million people on the road out here in Dustin
when it gets bogged down but that's something that we've got to face as a community there are going to be more people here we're the the second fastest growing population state in the country um behind Texas um everybody's flocking you know this from California Illinois
Jersey Connecticut New York and they're coming they're all coming south and the people from the West are going to Texas the people from the Northeast and Midwest are coming to Florida um population of Florida is going to be close to 24 million people by by 2030 um
right now in Okaloosa County there are let me look at this cuz I want to give you accurate numbers um there are 4,314 open jobs in the in the county um and there's only 2900 people looking for
jobs so that's 69 people per 100 jobs so even if those people looking for jobs were employed we're still behind by about 1,200 open positions those are things that we've got to address um I'm not going to talk about the cross town
connector youall know how I feel about that um um parking garages you know how we feel about that but I think a parking garage needs to be looked at as multi-use not just parking you can build a parking garage and put three stories of of affordable Workforce housing apartments on top of it or underneath it
and put the parking garage on top um you know you rank your service people as you take care of your residents you take care of the tourists you take care of the businesses when we say advocating our mission statement is advocating for business strengthening our Community
part of advocating for the business is the workforce um without the workforce we don't have the business so creating some kind of Workforce housing in this community I think is and we've talked about it it's not something you don't know um but I did want to just mention
that um we've got councilman schmi just brought up the the Public's property which my understanding is that we may have another opportunity there um that's a golden opportunity like those those things don't come to communities like this very often um a lot of y'all
probably don't know that I've got a lot of Economic Development experience in my 31 years in this silly profession that I've been doing um and uh you know I look at it and I go we're never going to rec recruit an auto manufacturer in Destin we're just not we don't want it
but what can we do incer that that that would bring those High skill highweight jobs here that would help us fill the workforce and then the last thing I will say is um you know I've sitting here and in this room a lot and I especially lately and listen to y'all talk about fees and impact fees and Mobility fees
and and things like that we've had to look at it as a chamber as our expenses are going up I I mean a breakfast we charge $25 to come to a breakfast and that's what a breakfast per person costs us and we've had to go up on those prices over the last four or five years
because of inflation you guys have to do do the same thing don't don't be scared or hesitant to to raise your fees if you have to to meet the needs that the community has that that is part of your responsibility I'm a chamber guy I am not a tax and spend I'm not a charge
fees and spend person but you have to cover your your your expenses and Jamie talked about the cost of insurance going up um we've been lucky um we've only had a 3 to 5% increase each year for the last four or five years but you start getting into 8 10 12% increases on a
staff your size that's a lot of money and there's got to be a way that you you make make that money and pay for it again I appreciate all that y'all do um I look around and I know that every one of you if and this happens quite often I get confused by something at a city council meeting I know that I can pick
up the phone on Tuesday Morning um and call any of you sitting around this table and you'll give me the answer that I'm looking for and I appreciate that um keep up the good work um you're doing good stuff you may not hear about it all the time um those quiet dogs are out there I know cuz I have them too um and
I appreciate what you do thanks thank you Mr Shane and behalf of the city thank you for all the chamber does for the citizens uh Showtime I ask a question about something Shane just said yes sir one thing you mentioned Mr Moody was the affordable Workforce housing right how
do you how do you overcome the Dilemma that it's affordable the first time but once that person purchases it they can sell it for whatever they want need to come back and and it's no longer affordable Workforce housing on round two I mean I get first round but second
round I don't like to use the phrase affordable because everybody in here can afford something um Workforce is you know it's it's you know one thing else that I would add is no more Apartments please um unless you're going to require them to put 35% Workforce affordability
apartments in them um but but it's it's you have to that's what I'm saying you have to look it can't just be building apartments it has to be Apartments as part of something else that is also generating income um this like we wanted to do on this
property over at Publix you know you build some office in retail um that helps pay for the construction of two stories of Workforce apartments on top of it um after the first round when they can afford it how do they get to the second
round that comes from high skill High wage jobs in the community and that doesn't necessarily fall on us that falls on other organizations as well it falls on the county it falls on um the EDC um um you know and we're a regional
economy as well it's it's it's funny people are so DES in this and we don't come to Destin because we don't like it or we don't go to 38 because we don't like it if you don't think people aren't Crossing county lines you know and y'all heard me say
this a lot we're a community y'all have 14,000 residents you have to worry about but the major impacts on our infrastructure are not our the residents in the city limits there's Kelly there's Walmart there's Home Depot there's Publix there's Dustin Commons we're a
community probably of 25 to 30,000 every single day but then there are times we a community of 100,000 people so the decisions that we make have to be it's it's big city problems with a small for a small community we don't have small community problems we' got big Community
problems and so they have to be addressed like we're a big city cuz here in a couple of weeks we have 880,000 people in town so did I answer your question going to ask the sheriff to give him Chief be's uh presentation from the other
night after this absolutely okay we don't we don't need the whole presentation again cuz most of us were sitting in there but but the community land trust is the solution and so that's uh and our chief can give you that
presentation because I'm hitting up against the time thing here okay did I answer your question sort of maybe kind of sort of kind of I think once I read this or or review the presentation he's speaking of and again that's a new idea there's nothing wrong with a new idea
that's how you have I think you have to look at it like that it can't be well let's go build a bunch of house that people can afford it's got to be part of something else all right uh now it's time to move to council and I know Mr Bagby and I'm just going to ask y's Indulgence because
I I leave at 10:00 to go get my wife and go to the airport so uh if you haven't read good to Great read it I've read it probably four or five times I've been using it to train my teams last 15 years uh some some of the stuff in there is dated so
some of the good to Great companies that they identified in 2003 uh are not great anymore uh some of them still are and that's a good thing there's uh a couple of points one the most important point
of that book and I maybe I missed it when I was writing notes but the most important is right at the beginning you got to get the right people on the bus in the right seats nothing is more important than that you're not going to get the flywheel concept and you're not going to do the
Hedgehog concept and you're not going to do all those things if you don't have the right people in the right seats I think we have the right people in the right seats at the senior level uh and we leave it up to y'all to make sure that we have the right people in the
right seats on the bus in the other seats on the bus and so and a big part of that is communication so when you're thing showed up because usually you know it's just like Shane said if he has a
question coming out of a council meeting he's not afraid to call I have lots of folks call me the day after a council meeting you know what what did you mean by that uh okay this is this is where I am I can't speak for anybody else but it's communication to your
teams uh that that sometimes it breaks down and so their perception is you know the council doesn't like them or the mayor doesn't like them no we love them okay but we also have are responsible uh stewards for the budget
for the fiscal side of it so I'd like to pay everybody you know $100,000 a year but that's not going to happen so you know that that's the the communication I would ask you to to work on that and then the flywheel concept he he briefly
mentioned it it's on on your path to Greatness you know you you start out good and it's like pushing a flywheel and it takes a lot of energy and a lot of effort but then once you build it it just it almost
takes a life of its own and so then Things become real easy because everybody kind of knows what everybody else is doing but no I I read I read it probably in the last year and a half uh and took my team up in Crestview through
so I would recommend it to you I have a couple extra copies if the library doesn't you know on on the vision uh I want a peaceful Coastal Community that that's really what I want
I want everything you know I want all the power lines buried uh both for a resiliency issue so resiliency is more than 98 because if one of those lines goes down uh then
whole sections of the Town go down you know if you're in sy's house and your line goes down your house goes down but everybody else may have power but if those lines on 98 go down hold swaths of
the Town go down and in a big storm you know if we were to lose those then you can't drive up and down 98 which is our main Corridor to you know evacuate people or to move emergency vehicles down or whatever I want parks in all
parts of the town I want little pocket Parks you know we can't have enough Green Space in this town for folks to go out and play with their kids or their dog or whatever and just because it's a calming effect there there's a you know
a Coastal Community has kind of a rhythm it's a EB and flow just like the tides and or the boats coming in and going out and that that's what I would like to see yeah we're we've gone through a you know we Shane talked about uh commercial
there was a time 25 years ago people thought we were going to have commercial we're going to have Light Industry in here we're going to manufacture things and it's like we're not going to manufacture things are you kidding me a manufacturing person cannot afford to
buy land and build a factory in here and then find the people I mean we can't even even find the people to do the businesses we have much less some even if it's a high-tech then we were going to build we were going to be a banking center or we were going to be a finance
Center and we were going to bring all those people in because they could afford the houses let's just be what we are okay we're a Coastal Community we're good neighbors you know we're going to have businesses we're going to have Banks and we're going to have grocery stores and we're going to have all this other stuff but we don't need to try to
be something that we're not and we need to focus on that Harbor uh the Community Land Trust not sure it would be here but maybe if it's just across the bridge or maybe it's uh you know most of the the places that are booming are Crest View
and Freeport and I mean they are booming Mossy Head is booming uh too so I look forward to seeing the plan of you know maybe improving our communication with our staff
uh and I'm more than willing I know Sandy is she's going to do uh committees and stuff but I'm more than willing to come and answer any questions anybody has on this team all3 of them or whatever it was whatever
that number was so and I think we're all committed to you know having a world class community and I think and we've improved and in a lot of areas uh you know we the harbor Boardwalk the parks
on the Harbor the parks on the bay uh didn't exist 25 years ago they all came from a vision of and when I think Vision I just close my eyes and go what I want it to look like I just want it to be calm I don't want to see any overhead
lines I just want to see trees I want to see little parks and people playing in parks and things like that so that that's my vision and I'll answer any questions about any of my comments or observations
cuz I want to be a part of the community too no okay well I I didn't know if we wanted to get Tori because he's kind of out of the old Tor you have a have to leave no and I apologize so I have a big
job in Sebring Florida I Drove All Night to Get Here on my phone apparently my phone's smarter than I am so since I was in Eastern Time on my calendar it said 9:30 so when I got here at 5: this morning when I actually got back into town at 5: this morning I didn't check
again and saw that it was 8:30 so that was my fault but uh I'm here for the rest of the day and I apologize for my tardiness you made it anyway that's why I was going to give t a little more time toate since he gotten in late okay yeah and I'm going to research this land trust thing because one of the downfalls I'm seeing is you have to have
significant amount of land to make it work and we don't have many 10 acre lots here in Dustin Florida so I don't anticipate that that's our solution but I'm going to research a little more while y'all are debating well I I I don't know but I
immediately thought of what we had an idea affordable housing was putting it on top of the parking garages and we own the property so they can't resell the house for more than they paid for it essentially or what the going rate is so they don't make much and so that keeps
it affordable for the people going forward um I know he said he didn't want me to tell you that we need trees on Airport Road but we need trees on Airport Road he said more no no but anyway
um I'm I uh have done quite a bit of listening I guess to uh parks and because of the parks Foundation um we need more money for our Parks the other thing we need to do is we have identified a lot of areas that are
rights of ways that go to the water we need to assign those to particular Department we need to decide what we're going to do with those we can't turn them into parks they are in residential neighborhoods they should not be advertised to our visitors but uh did you know that you
could take your dog swimming on a ride of way that you can't do in a park so just think about that we have a whole lot of space now that we people in neighborhoods can actually take their dogs swimming and that's been one of the questions that we've had for a long time
um I'd like to see $10 million put into Parks I think we could do a lot with that and we could really work toward making it world class but we'd have to have a vision statement the other thing is I want to put the H the word history back in the vision however we can get it in there
because I think that um Parker D actually brought this up uh on his term that opens us up to more grants because of the history we have here in our town um there are historical
grants out there so we're always looking for money we're always looking for things to do so just by adding the word history into the vision I think um now we can uh open that up without it in there we really don't have any way to
write a grant that says we're going to focus on history I think what the Dustin forward group is doing by putting the QR codes down in Leonard Dustin Park and getting Dewey and Parker to talk about their history and all of that for the visitors that are here that was an
original goal for the boardwalk to do that along the boardwalk because that's where the first fishermen were so expanding on that and looking at that but that is history and that costs money and if we can get some money by putting history in the vision I think we
need to do that um the trees that I mentioned uh we're building sidewalks all over the place and I think that's great uh I'm all for that but I also think we need to provide some kind of shade for that sidewalk because people aren't going to walk on
something in 100 Dee weather um that they can't have some kind of rest bit somewhere along the line doesn't have to be shade all along them but sometime somewhere um I think we're we're going down the right path and doing what we're doing I think we need to focus and I think
you've heard members of council talk about we need to improve our Parks we need to improve our Green Space we need to do all of that I I like what uh Sheriff fulum said about combining uh the sheriff's office with code enforcement I think they work hand inand
anyway so uh if we can find a place for everybody to be at that particular Point that's fine um I too want to improve communication with the staff I hope all of them understand that they can come to me at
any time and and tell me they're mad at me or tell me they don't like an idea or tell me you know because I don't hold grudges but anyway um I think the line of communication definitely is open but um
I'm a big parks person I'm a big green space person and I'm a tree hugger so any way we can make that work I'm all for it and I'll be glad to sponsor it thanks sure Mr Mayor proam I asked Mr Dustin all these years has he ever been
the mayor he said said no he gets to make motions and vote on things as a council member so uh thank you Mr Larry and staff for doing this this year uh thank you to our
partners and anybody here that's I think you're all Partners even if you're here as a Citizens you're partners with us so thank you and staff members that are here um you know I think this is my fourth or fifth visioning session so it's been uh
every year it's always it's it's good it is good and uh we talk about similar things um but what happens when we leave these Vision sessions is is in my opinion one of the most important
things and you know I I feel that unfortunately because of the um es and flows of our city leadership in the past handful of years um that might have caused some of some of the visioning
issues maybe I don't know um you know it it me personally to hear that there's city employees that see um disrespect or whatever the term was that they feel that the council has towards them uh I
don't like to hear that I I I truly don't like to hear that um and I would put that Larry on you now that you're here to you know the doors are always open sure my doors open but I know that a staff member is not going to want to call a
council member and I get that um but I'm going to put that on you to hopefully be our middle at least for me because I don't want any any human any person to feel like that um and if they do feel like that for me personally I believe it's possibly because of maybe the
change in leadership we've had and there's we're putting more weight on them but ultimately city manager is is or isn't here sometimes and so we're we're trying to go through that so um that's my first thought on that one um you know the last Vision session last
year I think a lot of us here and the ones that aren't here anymore talked about the parks we talked about that a lot last year I think um I think Miss fth Might Recall we talked about the kids in this community um but the actions that we have taken over the last
year I don't think met any of those discussions um the action that we took nearly a month ago to delay the park master plan in my opinion goes against everything that Mr Bagby just said he
voted to delay that um and I'm not trying to attack anybody but we're we're visioning here right we SP a year ago we said how important parks are and in the past year as a council we haven't done that and
we can try to do that but again I'm going to put it on you and and others to to bring it back to us more often or something put the pressure on the on the city council um and I'm going to continue to do that too myself because we've all said that's an important
Vision but we're not doing anything with that um pocket Parks all that stuff we've talked about it year after a year but we're not doing anything and those are some of the most important things to the citizens I I believe that um and I hope we can we can do that I hope we can
put money into our Parks and Recreation because we've all said how important that is uh fees and all these things that we're talking about with mobility and and building and all those things will help us create a Forward Thinking City in the future to
help us keep up with finances um but there's other things that the citizens want to see visually I I believe I truly believe and and I hope we can get there um we have a plan and a
vision for our roads for our sidewalks for our striping you know we have those plans and Visions but we I think we need to have a vision for the Landscaping of of our city I don't think we have that plan um you know Airport Road and our
other roadways have been so important over the years but I would love to see a plan at in the future and the budget future about the Landscaping at our city streets and and roadways because visually those are so important just as
they are for the as the roads um and and you know whether it was supposed to be today or not I feel like it should be but I'm I'm I'm a little concerned and upset that we do not have the SRS
item being brought to us today to talk about at our vision session um that that that was supposed to be discussed today I thought because that is a big item about the future of the city of dtin so I really hope at a
future city council meeting sooner than later that will come up because from my understanding staff needs to know what to do next and for me personally we need to look at that plan big time and vision how we can do that for the city of dtin
with with the sheriff's department that that he already talked about you know for for everybody else because I get that the $40 million price tag made everybody laugh and not want to talk about it but we can't have that mindset when we're talking about the
future of Destin in 10 20 30 years uh that plan and I get we've all had plans before but that is a very uh I believe a very important plan to the future of the city to discuss um our our issues that
we have our issues that the sheriff's department has our issues that code enforcement has our issues that our kids have and and growing in this city and uh I really hope that we'll take action on something like that here soon so um I
appreciate everybody I appreciate us doing this um we've had I think you're our third city manager now in my in my one plus term if you need me or others to help you do something to help push this
Vision forward please let us know I don't want to be a micromanager for the for the vision of of the city I don't want to do that me personally as a city councilman um I love volunteering my time and I think a lot of us
do but we need you know we need City management to help tell us right I I want to see our action plan our steps we we've lived off of the Strategic vision and goals for years around here but I think that's out the window now I think
so let's when we leave here I would love to see what you want to make sure we can help you and staff and everybody else execute this Vision because I will fight too hard too now to make sure that I can
at least try to work with them to equip you the and the staff to to get these things done so uh that's it thank you thank you yeah appreciate cor thank you sir and I appreciate you giving me just a moment to kind of review some things out there but um I think one thing Shane
Moody said is something we really need to concentrate on too we're we're 14,000 locals with almost 100,000 people here and if we're going to put locals first I think we really need to start looking at some programs to put locals first and I realize this isn't been in it's been a part of past visioning but not
necessarily um I I am curious if if we can do local business ReachOut programs where um we offer them some type of recognition or or preferential treatment if they do local benefit or or
local Performance Based programs such as uh in the past local discounts but even local waiting lists so when it's a holiday or or um your your wife's birthday or whatever if you're a local you can go into a
restaurant and get on a separate waiting list and you're not waiting two hours to to have a meal or something like that you know um just something that the city can kind of work on to to to try to put locals in that that mindset that this is their
community and not that they're just being run over by everybody that's coming down here trying to make a dollar or or enjoy our our area um another thing I'd like to bring up separate than that is uh the staff
appreciation one I recognize staff as being the professionals and and I hope that in the past I've I've let you all feel that way um I know in the first couple years of of my term I used to come to your offices all the time visit uh just spend time with you talk with
you never ask you to do anything but try to understand what what you all did and I hope that other council members are doing the same thing to to show their level of appreciation and respect for what you do um every single day uh and if if we're
not then then shame on us because you guys you're the professionals you know your job inside out we might know one one millionth of what you know and we have an idea and it's it's your expertise your knowledge your experience
that that facilitates that that idea um something that I would like to do or offer up is that we do some type of Staff Council events whether it's float trips whether it's just team building
things I realize that we might have some conflict with Sunshine but I mean as long as we have our core there and we're not talk and a lawyer there potentially and we're not talking about anything related uh I do remember a couple years ago under Lance Johnson's realm you all did a cookout of the Community Center I
asked if I could volunteer and I was told they don't they' prefer Council not to be there and I hope we can overcome that moving forward uh I would love to have been able to to grill something for you cook whatever it takes just to show those level of appreciation
but what what I would really ask is that you guys give us ideas I mean other than the fact that we need to show respect um courtesy and and move forward with with some of the plans give us ideas on how we can improve
because obviously we're all human we all make errors we all have busy lives and and we Overlook a lot of little details so maybe I'm asking for me personally let me know what I can
do to be better for you all right that's about all I got that uh leaves me and I share the visions of many of the council members that i' have shared this morning I uh
you know Sandy trees on Airport it would sure look a lot better than this the uh spare concrete hot thing that it is so that and Landscaping and making it look better in destined I support that the parks I support that also um we have
made great strides from the minute from the time when I first started on this Council we didn't have any parks now we've got large swasa we bought on the beach we put Parks all over um made great strides but need to keep making
those strides um I'm proud of the staff the job they do it's one of those jobs that doesn't get a lot of appreciation and gets a lot of criticism because of course people are always unhappy with what ever we do
and and the staff is the unfortunately the the focal point of their unhappiness many times um there's one thing that concerns me and and I think that you know we hear what's most important to the people in
Destin I can tell you through my experience the most important thing to the people in Destin is the ability to live in Destin uh Sandy and I can testify to the fact that most of the people who we grew
up with who we went to school with are not here anymore most of them left for one of two reasons they couldn't afford to live in Destin anymore or the crowded uh hectic pace we have just didn't agree
with their lifestyle and they very few left and they're leaving all the time so that leads me to my fear that as we move forward to try to implement all of these divions all of these they're they're tremendously expensive we only have a
pot of money that's so big so we have to balance our pie in the sky and everything we want to do for everybody with the fact that we only have a certain amount of money can we get more sure we can but every time we raise a fee every time we
raise any of the cost of uh what what you have to pay to live in destined we impact the people who live here and we impact the businesses tremendously also so we need to balance what we want to do with how much money we want to cost the folks who live here to pay
because after all government doesn't create money it just takes money from the people who live here and and and spends it so that's you know that's part of the uh the vision that I have is that while we need to move forward with some of these initiatives we don't need to
raise the amount of money that it costs the people in destined to live in destined to the point that they have have to go somewhere else then we truly don't have a community and and that's what the trend has been now for 20 years and we need to part of our vision means
to be that we do not destroy our community by doing things for our community so you know it's a balancing act and always has been but it's one that we need to pay attention to quite closely or we'll have the nicest Parks the prettiest beaches uh the best
parking garages the affordable housing but no Community anymore it'll just be like any other city that has a high tax rate and a high spend rate at some point there's too much so I will I will
leave my vision at that point we just need to save stay reasonable in our ability to tax and spend and also in our ability to regulate you know a lot of the folks who move away they moved away they want to get outside of a a highly
regulated area and we have done a good job of staying away from that in the past but we need to bear that in mind too city manager sir thank you for your kind words thank you for your support on behalf of Staff
you don't know how important that is to us to know that when we're out there trying to push through that you're behind us and we appreciate that and we want you to know that we're behind you guys that's our job you know you give us marching orders and we try to go put
them through um so we're looking forward to it when I said earlier that I make sure that our staff knows my door is always open I want to make sure you guys know it's always open it doesn't matter if you need something from May or our
office our staff let us know I'm not offended for you guys to reach out to staff if you got a question you know obviously there Charter things that say you do and things I do and don't but I trust your judgment I mean I I trust you to call um Jamie if you got an HR
question I don't think you're going to call Jamie and tell her to fire someone um you know so don't be don't hesitate to reach out in those instances but certainly uh I want you to know that you're always welcome and um I take our
um our job very serious but as uh Steve London said in the his book fish I don't have to take our we don't have to take ourselves serious but our jobs are very serious so so again thank you for your support kind words and we look forward to moving things forward um so I got a
few things we're going to close with where need to go public comments there we go okay so anyone from the public have have any other comments anyone from our partners have any further comments about staff you guys
got anything want to share yes sir come on it's already on good do you have to say my name Brian AO 3826 Indian Trail yeah Parks right you guys have heard me say it I'm here all the time Parks uh it's the partnership every place I go
every Park is sponsored by something but I don't see that when I go to doar Parks here maybe it's just not that we don't have the signage but everywhere you go um Ferry Park I was just there last weekend in Fort wal Beach some Aviation
company built the sign right we need to figure out a way to get more Partnerships in our park so we have the funding that's all I have thank you thank you for that anyone else staff anybody okay all right we will move
right through I just got a few more things I want to share and um Andy yeah keep going it should be the next one no go all the way to the end we'll get there shortly we get to see meatloaf again that was pretty cool
right here so you guys hand us that nasty tiedye t-shirt we're going to try to bring you back a rainbow sometimes that's hard to do but that's our goal uh so I thought that was I heard that analogy the other day and I thought that was pretty interesting because sometimes
what we walk away with ain't real pretty uh but we're going to do our best to deliver it back in that next state so as we move forward we're talking about progress and motion uh I'm stressing to our staff that we're going to move forward with a sense of urgency
it's not going to be in a rush and we're not going to be in a panic but when we show up in the morning we're going to look at the things we need to get done uh in an urgent manner Destin is growing it's a dynamic city uh we need to be able to deal with the challenges as they
come before us and we have to act with urgency again not in a rush and not in a panic but with a sense of urgency to get things done we need to embrace change we've all heard the old saying that if it ain't
broke don't fix it well sometimes if it ain't broke we need to break it uh we and get out of the mold of we've always done it this way let's look for those new ways to do things and we'll find that maybe better ways to move forward and not be afraid of change let's embrace it and let's Let It Be our
friend so that we can do things better than what we've done them before this is one that I think is important that I'm I'm stressing to staff is we need to see see things through the lens of the city council you guys are in a unique position that again
as I said earlier you put yourself out there and said would you vote for me to come represent you on in the city government and as uh mayor to protim said you know we get to take those people's money you get to go say this is
how much money you're giving us and they they don't really have a choice um so that's a unique situation to be in and us on staff we need to understand that what goes into what you guys do uh I'm fortunate that I have sat there so I can share some of that Insight with them but
don't ever hesitate to reach out to us and let us know maybe we're not thinking about it the way you see it or think of it and let us know that because that's what's important is that you know we're all in this together and we all have a role to play uh and we need to respect
and understand what the role the city council is and as issues come before us we need to have the mindset of if I were a council member how would I see that and put ourselves in your shoes so that we can see it in the vision that you see it in next slide is um those of you that up
here with me remember driving late at night turning your AM radio on and listen to WWL out of New Orleans or WSB out of Atlanta Atlanta and some talk radio show Neil borts was on Atlanta late night forever but I was coming home
from Jacksonville one night and I tuned in that was probably early morning and I picked up a radio show where the individual was uh interviewing the host was interviewing the executive director of the Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra and the the guy had been there
for two years the first year he got there as executive director the symphony orchestra in Jacksonville was running a million dollar in the red now I'm a Country Boy from mad I couldn't imagine any s Orchestra dealing with a million dollars much sess running into deficit
by a million dollars but the next over two years he had it turned around and they were operating with a one and a half or $2 million in the black and the host asking he said well how in the world did you pull that off he said it was very simple we instituted a policy said that said that which gets measured
gets done so we've embraced that and our staff that when we're trying to get something accomplished we're going to put measurements in it we're going to have milestones and we're going to make those incremental um uh successes so that we can come to the end of the goal
um and so there's value and measurement so we're going to work to measure the things that we're trying to do so that we can know we can get them done um next thing is see something fix something you know we're out in about the city all the
time I've told our staff if you see something needs to be fixed corrected take care of it you don't need to make a phone call to see if it's okay uh I mean if it needs to be done let's just do it uh and and not worry about who's going to get credit or how it got done but you know let's let's do our best to take
care of the things that they come forward and finally Robert Frost and his um The Road Not Taken says two roads diverge into a wood and I I took the one less traveled and it's made all with difference I suggest that that less
travel road is a road to Greatness there's bumps there's speed humps in that road as ill advised as they may be there's potholes and Michael we need to get on those potholes but we're going to have to dodge them and fix them as we come no
potholes uh there's that's cuz we couldn't afford the speed bumps that's correct yeah there there are traffic lights on that road and when it's red you know we're going to stop and when when it's green we're going to go but when it's yellow uh we're going to blow
through that sucker and take our chances we may get stopped on the other side we may get T-Bone but we're not going to pump the brakes we're going to hit the gas so with that uh I'll leave you with the idea that uh the journey to Great is a journey and it's
not a destination and your staff and I are pleased to be on that journey and we look forward to you joining it with us uh thank you for your your comments today and um that's all we have so if anybody else has anything now would be a good time
anyone Mr Mayor anything from you com thank you very much everyone e